Every life form makes a difference

[Music]

hello everyone

how many of y’all have spent your

vacations tracking tigers or elephants

in a forest

or better still doing pottery in a

quaint little indian village

not many right because when it comes to

picking the ideal travel

destination wildlife sanctuaries don’t

necessarily feature on that list for

many people

but that wasn’t true in my case i was

four years old

when i did my first road trip mumbai

to the southernmost tip of indian

mainland kanyakumari

my parents planned this exotic road

journey

because they wanted me to experience my

country

and its different cultures we visited a

lot of national parks

went to religious places of worship and

met incredible local people

and i distinctly remember one incident

we had stopped for lunch at a small

village

and there was this bunch of kids who

were playing

with a small mud house that they had

built

and they had these dolls with them made

out of twigs

and they had used jackfruit seeds for

decorating the heads of the doll

and they had dressed up those dolls with

leaves and flower petals

seeing their smiling faces and simple

lifestyle

made me wonder do you really need barbie

dolls and fancy toys

to be happy in life even if you’re a

small child

so this question of finding true

happiness kept popping up

as i traveled across india and

experienced the lifestyles of different

local communities

the answer presented itself and i

realized

that finding true happiness is all about

searching it within yourself you only

need to know

how to mine it travel changes you

in so many different ways much more

than you can ever imagine it shapes your

personality

and it broadens your horizons being a

wildlife presenter and storyteller

has taught me so many different things

and these

lessons have been ingrained within me

possibly because i didn’t wrote learn it

from a textbook

sitting in a classroom so

today i’m going to share with you my top

three key lessons that i have picked up

on this journey number one respect

the first thing that nature teaches you

is to value

every creature no matter how big or

small

it is the web of life connects

all these different beings and even if

one thread is broken

then the entire balance gets tilted

similarly in human life as well we need

to respect people

irrespective of their caste creed

religion gender sexuality or vocation

for that matter

we all have a role to play on this

planet

and i discovered this more but when i

began working with the local fishing

community

in bom in mumbai during wetland

conservation project which i have been

working on for the past two years now

so mumbai as you know is a coastal city

and at one point it used to have

a lot of wetlands and mangroves and

marshes

today very few of these pockets remain

because a majority of them have been

taken up for development

so there is this one wetland among these

known as punjay

which is the last remaining wetland of

oran

now this is about 523 hectares of land

which is like magically based out with a

pristine ecosystem

and every year over 1.4 lakh migratory

birds

visit punjab not only this over 2

500 fishermen are dependent on punjab

for their daily income and livelihood

so panchay also happens to be selected

as the hub

of a very massive

luxury residential complex which is

supposed to be a part of a larger

special economic zone which is coming up

at uran

now what’s at stake if punjab wetlands

are reclaimed

one not only are you standing to lose

a pristine ecological habitat

but also real people’s livelihoods like

you

and me will be gone forever

won’t it be much easier if the developer

just decided to you know just shift the

place of this uh township from punjay

to another location probably within the

essiz area

that way it’s a win-win situation for

both the local community

and the migratory birds and the bird

life out there

because we are talking about real people

who

have been fishing for generations these

people

know about sustainable fishing about

conservation

about the migratory birds that visit

these wetlands

much more than an average city dweller

does

and it is the fishes that are caught by

these fishermen

that end up on silver platters in a

five-star hotel

yet when it comes to taking decisions

that impair their livelihood

they are taken with undue haste without

even proper thinking

and probable uh consideration of

alternatives

thus implying that we have to be more

inclusive

and more considerate of all these local

communities around us

just like fishermen who act as guardians

of

our ocean and of our seas the indigenous

tribals of our forests

or its protectors so when you’re sitting

in your house and probably

you know wondering whether to binge

watch on national geographic or

discovery channel

after a yummy meal there is someone who

in the forest has patrolled all day and

is having a meager meal

when you are watching a tiger

documentary and marveling at

the majestic bengal tiger there is

someone

who has stood tall against poachers

to defend the life of that very tiger

a forest guard toils suffers

and emerges victorious every day

but their victories largely go unheard

they are the first line of defense when

it comes

to our wildlife they put their lives in

danger

every single day to protect the last of

our endangered

yet they aren’t

that glorified i have had the fortune

of spending some of my time and meeting

these real life heroes and listening to

their stories

these people live in areas of human

animal conflict

sometimes they lose their loved ones or

their cattle

to animal attacks their crops get raided

by these wild animals

yet they work relentlessly to protect

the forest and its delicious

when you work towards something that you

love do it

without any expectations or hope of

getting a possible return or benefits

moving on to my third lesson which is

connected to my previous two

i got to know about this while working

on a project involving big cats

and the local communities that live with

these predators

so in gujarat if you notice there is a

tribe known as maldharis

now they are people who live right in

the heart

of geer national park which is the only

home

to the asiatic lion now these people

are cattle herders and they worship the

asiatic lion as lord narasimha

the fierce half-line half-man avatar of

lord vishnu

so i got talking to a maldari village

headman

and he told me something which stayed on

with me

his exact words are and i quote

we are the lions guests we live in their

house

so how can we ever disrespect them

those words were so poignant that they

stuck with me

despite losing their cattle time and

again to this big cat

they continued to worship it and they

never think of

revenge killing such deep is their

worship

this practice not only exists in gujarat

but in maharashtra as well

there is a group of people who revere

the tiger at lord varghoba

to them he is vana devata the lord of

the jungle

so their worship transcends the daily

temple rituals

and is actually practiced by them every

single day

this is what taught me my third lesson

of living in harmony

even if you’re sometimes in a hostile

environment

so when you look at nature there is

something infinitely healing

in the repeated refrains of her canopies

the assurance

that after every night comes a new dawn

and after every winter come spring

being a wildlife storyteller has made me

a better human being

i realized by looking at nature that

absolutely there are no barriers or

boundaries

you know there are no artificial

discriminations on the basis of caste

creed religion gender sexuality age

vocation none of them matter in real

life

because after all we all are creations

of mother nature

so when you look at the principles that

exist

in nature they are all echoed

in the preamble of the constitution of

india which is very interesting

so it’s high time i feel that we

learn tolerance and we become

understanding of the various

social and ideological beliefs and

differences that exist among various

communities

because only when we embrace each

other’s differences

then and only then can the varied colors

of humanity shine through

thank you